Collins’s son, Cameron Collins, and Stephen Zarsky, the father of Cameron Collins’s fiancee, were also charged.

The indictment is related to Innate Immunotherapeutics, an Australian biotech company on whose board the congressman served. Collins illegally shared nonpublic information about the company with his son, who traded on the information, according to federal prosecutors. Cameron Collins then passed that information along to Zarsky. The trades allowed Collins, his son and Zarsky to avoid $768,000 in losses, according to the indictment.

And...

Collins was an early backer of Trump and has been one of the president’s most ardent and outspoken supporters in the House. He has also publicly boasted of his ties to Trump, as well as the benefits he could bestow as a congressman. Reporters overheard him near the House floor earlier this year talking on the phone and proclaiming that he had created millionaires in Buffalo.

.....saw this breaking news and read the story.......how does he not realize that he is giving his son 'insider information' on the drug trial failing........he probably just thought he wouldn't get caught.....

Unless there is more to the story, I don't think this has all that much to do with Trump. Maybe Collins felt somewhat more emboldened to do these things because of Trump, but both parties have regular occurrences of Representatives guilty of graft and other seedy behavior.

He represents the GOP area between Rochester and Buffalo. Just enough Democrats to swing the seat in Novermber. He's a wheeler dealer who bought a bunch of busted tech and bio companies after the Crash. Good chance he's done more than this stunt with his high flyer ways.

QuoteLux Interior
I thought they made it legal for the swamp critters to do insider trading?

They did. Pres. Obama signed it into law - the second worst thing he did. But the Collins' case is different in that he was trading on inside info gained as a board member of the company, not info gained as a congressman.

Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

The Manafort case is shining a light on the extent to which white collar crime goes undetected - there are lots of Manaforts and Gates' out there overstating income when seeking loans and under-reporting for taxes - putting banks at risk and costing the gov't oodles in uncollected taxes. And others like Collins doing insider trading.

If he had not been associated with the Trump campaign Manafort would be a free man, likely not in any legal trouble at all. Yet when investigated he's done enough to go away for life.

It's a problem much bigger than Trump for sure but he's the poster child for it.

QuoteLux Interior
I thought they made it legal for the swamp critters to do insider trading?

They did. Pres. Obama signed it into law - the second worst thing he did. But the Collins' case is different in that he was trading on inside info gained as a board member of the company, not info gained as a congressman.

It's still illegal for members of Congress and the executive branch to do insider trading.

However, as a little parting gift from Eric Cantor it's just more difficult to track those trades. The STOCK law was so important and widely applauded when Obama signed it into law in 2012, then they undid big pieces of it very much under the radar the following year.

Quote[Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom] Price bought shares of the company in 2015 and 2016 while still a member of the House, representing Georgia. At least four of Collins’ Republican House colleagues followed suit, buying into Innate in January when the company traded at an all-time high of about $1.20 per share. Collins’ chief of staff, Michael Hook, is among Innate’s top 20 shareholders, as are two of the congressman’s children.

He even bragged publicly, and in front of reporters, about how many of his friends, colleagues, and donors he had made wealthy by recommending they invest in Innate.

QuoteOH in the speaker's lobby: 'Do you know how many millionaires I've made in Buffalo the past few months?' -@RepChrisCollins on his cellphone

— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) January 10, 2017

Innate Therapeutics peaked shortly thereafter, the week of Trump inauguration, around $1.23. It fell off a cliff last June (2017), dropping ~91% in a day to 5 cents a share when it's only product was shown to be essentially worthless. And Collins, who was on the company's board and was it's #2 stockholder, was part and parcel of the runup:

QuoteCollins also played a major role in shaping the 21st Century Cures Act. According to various news reports, Collins inserted a provision into the late-2016 legislation that allowed a fast-track approval process for investigational drugs. This provision boosted Innate's stock by helping bring Innate's sole product, a Multiple Sclerosis drug called MIS416, to market more quickly.

Collins just happened to have bought up about a million dollars in Innate stock in August 2016, as the 21st Century Cures Act wended its way through Congress. This purchase was part of a special stock offering — a VIP opportunity into which Collins brought some friends. "Sixteen people with close ties to Collins bought Innate shares at discounted prices of $0.18 or $0.26 cents per share," the Daily Beast reported in April. "Those investors have given nearly $42,000 to Collins's political campaigns over the years, a review of campaign finance records found."

This wasn't just insider trading, this was a corrupt self-enriching scam that crashed. But don't hold your breath waiting for that prosecution.